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Why Should We Care About Women’s Tenure Security?

As other chapters have argued, tenure security can mean the difference between a safe and stable home and being homeless; between starting and growing a business or not; between growing long-term crops, planting trees, adopting conservation measures, and protecting the environment, or thinking only of short-term outputs; between obtaining working capital and investing in better livelihoods or being trapped in high-risk-low-return options; and between having a voice and being heard or being marginalized, ignored, or humiliated (Meinzen-Dick et al., 2019; World Bank, 2008; FAO, 2002).

Yet, too often, when we discuss gaps in tenure security or put in place interventions to strengthen it, we adopt a gender-blind approach that is anchored on households, or on “heads of households,” who are typically male, ignoring in both cases the complex web of gender norms and family dynamics that severely and systematically weaken women’s tenure security.

We continue to use a gender-blind approach even though in large portions of the world women are consistently denied access and rights to land; even though the additional tenure insecurity increases women’s physical, social and economic vulnerability; even though there is ample evidence showing that gender-blind interventions will not sufficiently address women’s tenure constraints; and even though we have consistently found that interventions that enhance women’s access to and control over resources are likely to lead to better outcomes for women, their families and their communities.

In Large Portions of the World Women Are Systematically Denied Access and Rights to Land

In societies where access to land is largely driven by family relations, women’s ability to obtain and retain access to a plot is directly tied to the wishes of their husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, or in-laws (Lastarria-Cornhiel et al., 2014; OHCHR, 2012; Benschop, 2004). Daughters are prevented from inheriting parental land if they are generally viewed as “transitory” members of their natal household who will likely move to their husbands’ household upon marriage. Wives are disposed from the land if their husbands abandon them, divorce them, or marry other wives. And women lose their land as they get older and outlive their husbands, a not-so-uncommon occurrence given women’s longer life expectancy, because they become victims of land grabs through violence and bullying from their in-laws or others in their communities.

Widowhood, Witchcraft, and Tenure Insecurity

In Northern Tanzania, one of the most harmful accusations waged against a widow is responsibility for the death of her husband. Flora’s husband died of HIV, and during his burial ceremony in a village some 300 miles west of their home in Dar-es-Salaam, Flora’s in-laws accused her of bewitching her husband and causing his death.

She cried all night, requesting to return to Dar es Salaam with her children. Her father-in-law wouldn’t allow it, forcing her to leave without them.

When she arrived home, Flora found that her father-in-law had locked her matrimonial house, denying her access to it. Her ownership of land and property had shaped Flora’s social identity, and without these assets she was insecure and powerless.

Flora’s story describes what a number of widows in Tanzania and other African countries experience. Although accusations of witchcraft are not the only reason widows are left landless or impoverished, they can be a driving factor in justifying land grabbing in the eyes of those responsible, and indeed, by the community as a whole.

But women’s de facto discrimination is not limited to family dynamics (Archambault & Zoomers, 2015; Lastarria-Cornhiel et al., 2014; OHCHR, 2012). Formal and customary laws often prevent women from owning, inheriting, or transacting land. Women continue to be left out of government-sponsored land allocations, land reforms, or land rights formalization programs that assign and document rights to the head of the household, typically a man. Women are often limited in their access to institutions or authorities that are in charge of resolving all land disputes, but whose location, staffing, processes, or cost unintentionally favors men.

Even when markets could offer women a promising path to overcome these obstacles and achieve tenure security, they may fall short of what is needed. Social norms that restrict the economic activities deemed suitable for women, financial institutions that limit women’s access to working capital, and land markets biased against women all combine to constrain women’s economic ability to access and retain land (Lastarria-Cornhiel et al., 2014).

Tenure Insecurity Increases Women’s Physical, Social, and Economic Vulnerability

Mindful of their tenuous tenure security, women may forego livelihood strategies that could be more profitable, safe, and sustainable, because they cannot count on the long-term tenure security required to pursue those strategies; or they may grow fearful and compelled to endure physical, emotional, or economic violence because of their weak fall-back position. Since these tenure vulnerabilities are internalized and externally reinforced by society at large, they have a negative impact not just on the women who are threatened by their families, but on all women, because women are aware that they could one day find themselves in similar situations. The consequences are enormous for the women themselves, their families, and their communities.

Women Landowners and Leasing

Poonam, from Uttar Pradesh, India, had a happy and prosperous family. Her husband was managing their land, working in the city, and helping her raise their children. But two years ago, he was killed in a road accident.

Agriculture is now the only source of income for Poonam and her children. However, as a Brahmin, Poonam cannot cultivate the land herself, and she cannot talk to men she is not related to because of gendered social restrictions. So she is dependent on her husband’s brother to lease out her land.

Her tenant is honest and hardworking, yet Poonam believes more entrepreneurial tenants would generate higher yields and thus offer her a higher share. However, Poonam feels she cannot challenge her brother-in-law’s choice without compromising his willingness to assist her in the many other circumstances in which she will need the intermediation of a man.

Poonam’s concerns are compounded by her lack of experience. Her husband used to be the one in charge of leasing their agricultural land and all the decisions related to it. Poonam was not privy to the considerations that went into those decisions and worries that she may not be able to find a dependable tenant by herself.

Poonam’s story underscores how women, even when they do own land and belong to the highest caste, can face challenges exercising their land rights and, ultimately, become tenure insecure.

Gender-Blind Interventions Will Not Sufficiently Address Women’s Tenure Constraints

Unless they specifically seek to address the gender gap, interventions to secure tenure may fail to address women’s most pressing tenure constraints; may deliver goods, services or information in ways that are not helpful to women; or may fail to reach entire categories of women. Examples of these unintended consequences abound. They include countries’ efforts to document land rights using forms that only allow for one name and thereby assign rights to household heads or household representatives; systemic formalization efforts that only register rights of legally married spouses, leaving behind women in customary unions, in polygamous marriages, or who have been cohabitating with their partners for years; trainings that are held in places women cannot access or at times women are not available; information campaigns that fail to consider that women may not be fluent in the official languages or may not have direct access to common channels of communication; compensation and relocation programs that ignore women’s livelihoods and their economic contributions to their families; and efforts that ignore how cultural norms and family dynamics hamper women’s tenure security.

Interventions That Enhance Women’s Access to and Control Over Resources Are Likely to Lead to Better Outcomes for Women, Their Families, and Their Communities

A recent study by Meinzen-Dick et al. (2019) finds that while the breadth and rigor of the evidence varies, there is a high level of agreement among development practitioners linking enhanced women’s land rights to improved women’s resilience, women’s empowerment, women’s decision-making, families’ and children’s food security, families’ investments in human capital, and families’ investments in natural resource management.

Examples often cited in the literature connect strengthened women’s land rights to households’ adoption of soil conservation practices in Uganda and Zambia (Deininger et al., 2008; Dillon & Voena, 2018); women making household decisions in Tanzania, India, and Nepal (Grabe, 2015; Santos et al., 2014; Allendorf, 2007); women renting out land and increasing their income in Ethiopia (Holden et al., 2011); households having more food available in Ethiopia and fewer malnourished children in Nepal (Ghebru & Holden, 2013; Allendorf, 2007); and women speaking up in community meetings, having more access to customary authorities, and having stronger social relations in Tanzania (Goldman et al., 2016; Grabe, 2015).

In fact, the foundational and cross-cutting role of women’s tenure security was officially acknowledged and widely recognized in 2015 when governments across the world tied women’s tenure security to 3 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) they pledged to achieve by 2030: end poverty (Goal 1), achieve food security (Goal 2), and empower women and eliminate gender inequality (Goal 5). Their specific commitments with regard to women’s land rights are stipulated under SDG Targets 1.4, 2.3, and 5.a, where they essentially committed to eliminating the gender gap in tenure rights and to ensure secure land rights for all women and men, particularly the more vulnerable (UN, 2015).

The Scale of the Problem: How Many Women Are Tenure Insecure?

We do not know. The data on tenure security is scarce and inconsistent. It typically comes from surveys that cover only a portion of a country, as is the case with agricultural census or surveys of urban populations; surveys that only focus on specific segments of the populations, such as land users, landholders, landowners, or landowners with documents; and surveys that do not consistently collect all the information necessary to evaluate women’s tenure security. It is therefore very difficult to aggregate the information nationally and have comparable measures across countries.

A primary challenge is that most data on tenure security is collected at the household level and by default assumes that the interests of women are subsumed in the interests of their households or that all household members share congruent interests, even though when a household dissolves—for any reason—it does matter who has formal or customary rights to the land. Furthermore, because household-level surveys typically engage the head of the household, or the most knowledgeable person in the household, they likely fail to provide accurate information about the tenure security of other adult household members who may be more insecure: elderly parents or in-laws, adult children, siblings who live in the same house, and especially wives or cohabitating partners.

Lastly, surveys rarely ask about perceived tenure security. They are more likely to ask about the ways in which people access land (i.e., Do they rent it? Do they own it? How did they acquire it?), or whether people have documents to prove their land rights. All important information, of course, but not sufficient to determine whether people actually feel tenure secure and it is these perceptions that will fundamentally shape what people want to do with the land: how they want to use it, whether they want to invest on it, and whether they want to transact it, which are precisely the environmental, economic and social outcomes that policymakers want to influence.

Still, the limited evidence to which we have access points to systemic differences in women’s and men’s tenure security. The pioneering effort of Doss et al. (2014) to gather individual data on ownership of agricultural parcels in Ghana, Ecuador, and the state of Karnataka in India provides a preliminary glimpse into gender differences in tenure security (Fig. 5.1). In Karnataka, 72% of the men owned agricultural parcels compared to a mere 16% of the women. The gap was smaller but still substantial in Ghana, where 67% of men and only 32% of the women owned land. By strong contrast, in Ecuador, where there is considerable joint ownership of land, women were slightly more likely than men to own an agricultural parcel. Similarly, 2010 data from the FAO Gender and Land Rights Database reveals that, in most regions of the world, the vast majority of those managing or controlling agricultural holdings are men and that holdings managed by women tend to be smaller in size (Fig. 5.2) (FAO, 2011).

Fig. 5.1
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Distribution of the form of ownership, agricultural parcels. Source: Doss et al. (2014). Reproduced with permission

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Fig. 5.2
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Share of male and female agricultural holders in main developing regions. Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2011), http://www.fao.org/3/i2050e/i2050e.pdf. Reproduced with permission

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These figures align with what has been revealed by smaller-scale studies on differences between men’s and women’s ownership or management of land, but they fall short of revealing the true scale of women’s tenure insecurity. They do not address the fact that even those who own or manage land may not be tenure secure or that people who access land through arrangements such as customary systems or leasing markets may in fact feel they have secure tenure.

Fortunately, the SDGs have opened a highly consequential path to fill this data void. SDG indicators 1.4.2 and 5.a.1 will rely on primary, nationally representative, and sex-disaggregated data to diagnose and monitor changes in tenure security for all—men and women, with a particular focus on the more vulnerable among them. SDG indicator 5.a.2 will track legal and policy steps countries have taken to reduce the gender gap in tenure rights.

This is undoubtedly a tremendous breakthrough—a global agreement on the type of data to collect, national mandates to collect that data, and powerful and highly visible mechanisms to monitor progress in tenure security. In practice, however, it will take years before these commitments yield meaningful, inclusive, and up-to-date data. During this transition, Prindex, a recently launched global poll on property rights, offers some high-level findings.

For the 33 countries in which Prindex has been piloted, we now have nationally representative data on adults’ perceptions of their tenure security at the individual level (Fig. 5.3).Footnote 1 The Prindex data offer a significant step forward because it asks about perceptions of tenure security; it uses questions that are consistent across countries; and most importantly, it relies on nationally representative samples of adults, not households.

Fig. 5.3
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Tenure insecurity and security for all adults, by country and region. Source: Prindex (2019a). Reproduced with permission

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In line with the SDG guidelines, Prindex gauged people’s tenure security by asking them how likely they were to lose their house against their will in the next five years (Fig. 5.3). Of the nearly 53,000 adults interviewed, one in four felt insecure about their land and property (Prindex, 2019a). This represents an astonishing number of people, given that the countries included in the study have a combined population of 889 million adults.

However, Prindex data illuminated significant differences in tenure security by gender, showing that the gender gap in tenure security was unexpectedly small and inconsistent across countries (Fig. 5.4) (Prindex, 2019b). In some countries, like Benin, the UK, and Peru, women were 5% more likely than men to report being insecure in their tenure. In others, like Vietnam, Mozambique, and Malawi, no gender gap in tenure security was found. Even more surprisingly, data from Prindex demonstrated countries where men were more likely than women to report being insecure in their tenure, such as in Bolivia, Cambodia, and Jordan.

Fig. 5.4
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Difference in perceived tenure insecurity between men and women by country. Source: Prindex (2019a). Reproduced with permission. Note: numbers were rounded to zero decimal places; there are small differences between countries that may be observed by the size of the bars even though the number is the same

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Importantly, Prindex found that, in all but a handful of countries, women were more likely than men to say that they could lose the land in the event of divorce (Fig. 5.5) or spousal death (Fig. 5.6) (Prindex, 2019b). The differences are staggering: women are up to 46% and 35% more likely to feel tenure insecure from divorce and the death of a spouse, respectively. This is not trivial since, across the 33 countries, disagreements with family or relatives were the second most common reason given by those who reported tenure insecurity (Prindex, 2019a).

Fig. 5.5
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Difference in tenure insecurity rates by gender in a divorce scenario. Source: Prindex (2019b). Reproduced with permission

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Fig. 5.6
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Difference in tenure insecurity rates by gender in a spousal death scenario. Source: Prindex (2019b). Reproduced with permission

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The Prindex data represent just 33 countries, but the data so far provide valuable insights. First, the gender disparity in tenure insecurity is indeed a critical concern. Second, overall nearly a quarter of women are tenure insecure, and the underlying reasons vary across countries. Third, we should not make assumptions about the magnitude, or even direction, of the gender gap in tenure security: each country will have to rely on its own sex-disaggregated, nationally representative data on adults’ tenure security for policy decisions. Lastly, to adequately address tenure security concerns, we must identify the drivers of the insecurity. The data so far indicate a need to depart drastically from the prevalent and more traditional approaches to secure tenure, which tend to focus on (gender-blind) formalization and mapping of property rights, decentralization of government responsibilities, and digitalization of land administration services.

To enhance women’s tenure security, the suite of interventions needed must also include efforts to protect women from discriminatory cultural norms and family dynamics seeking, for example, to achieve community-wide changes in attitudes and behaviors that enable daughters to inherit rights to land and protect women from losing their land rights when they get married, get divorced or become widows; or gender-responsible government programs so that women are not consistently left behind when land rights are allocated, adjudicated, or compensated for, when information about laws, programs or opportunities is disseminated, or when decision-making authority is devolved to community members.

What Can Be Done to Address Women’s Tenure Insecurity?

There are no simple cookie-cutter solutions that apply across the world. It is important to consider (1) whose tenure security we hope to strengthen, and specifically which group of women; (2) how the insecurity manifests itself, or put differently, what more specific security constraints we are trying to address; and (3) how those constraints can be addressed effectively. We address each of these questions below.

Who Are the Tenure Insecure Women?

Not all women are tenure insecure, as is clear from the data presented above. We therefore need a more nuanced understanding of who the tenure insecure women are, and our findings are bound to vary by country and context (Chigbu et al., 2019).

Consider, for instance, the factors that might drive differences in the tenure security of women across the world. Are tenure insecure women concentrated in rural areas or in informal settlements? Are they more prevalent among certain ethnic or religious groups, in indigenous communities, or among the elderly? Are they concentrated in low-income populations or among small business owners? Given the significance of marital status, are most tenure insecure women widows, common-law partners, polygamous wives, unmarried women? Answers to these questions will shed light on who needs to be targeted and how best to reach them to strengthen their tenure security (e.g., through printed materials, radio shows, text messages, self-help groups, schools, religious institutions).

Why Are Women Tenure Insecure?

Just as there is variation in which women have insecure tenure, there is also variation in the causes of tenure insecurity. Some women may be affected by tenure security constraints that impact not just them, but their entire community. This may be the case of women who are members of indigenous communities with insecure land rights or women who belong to communities subjected to poor governance at the village, district, or provincial level. Other women experience tenure insecurity because their households are insecure. When families are dealing with boundary disputes, or are unable to pay costly fees, or are discriminated against for political reasons, the challenges they face will inevitably impact their female members. And yet another group of women experience tenure insecurity even though (men in) their families and their communities have secure tenure.

Identifying a suite of interventions that can successfully strengthen women’s tenure security requires that one starts by fully identifying the problems. What are women’s greatest concerns? Research indicates that concerns can range from their families being displaced by corporations, their in-laws taking over the land, their inability to pay rent, the threat of customary leaders reassigning land use rights and cultural norms dictating that women should forego their rights to inherit parental land in favor of their brothers, to women being ignored by authorities when there is a need to resolve land disputes. The main sources of women’s tenure insecurity can be revealed using a combination of carefully tailored surveys, qualitative research, and input from gender experts on land.

But one should go further to determine the root of these insecurities. What women experience is the result of interrelated forces that shape land tenure and rights in their particular context—what is typically known as a “land rights system.” To identify the weaknesses in a land rights system, one should consider four of its elements. Land rights systems are shaped by:

  • Statutory and customary land-related laws, policies, regulations, conventions, and agreements that embody the rights determined and enforced by governments and communities;

  • Formal and informal institutions and actors who influence, decide, manage, or enforce land-related rights;

  • Social norms that shape attitudes and beliefs on who should have land, for what purpose, and through which means; and,

  • Individuals and communities whose land-related rights are protected, strengthened, limited, or negated by the system.

Challenges to women’s tenure security can originate or be reinforced by any one of these elements. For women to be tenure secure, as laid out in Landesa (2019), the land rights system must be effective, inclusive, and gender-equitable.

Women will not be secure, unless the land rights system in which they operate works. The land rights system has to be able to clearly define and enforce who has which rights and for how long, as well as how people can acquire new rights and how people can protect the rights they possess (Landesa, 2019; Doss & Meinzen-Dick, 2018; Place et al., 1994).

However, land rights systems can operate effectively and still fail to include and protect some members of the society. Thus, for women to be tenure secure, the land rights system has to ensure land rights for women of all ethnicity, religion, or other social groups, and in line with their needs and perspectives (Landesa, 2019).

Furthermore, to ensure women’s tenure security, the land rights system must also rule out gender preferences in how land rights are acquired, experienced, and protected. Meeting this higher bar requires paying attention to a much broader set of policies, laws, norms, institutions, and actors, including, for example, communities’ land use plans, and religious, family, inheritance, and marital laws that also shape and enforce women’s ability to acquire, exercise and protect their land rights.

What Can Be Done?

As the saying goes, identifying the problem is halfway to the solution. We cannot provide an exhaustive list of options here, as that is well beyond the scope and focus of this chapter. However, a few recommendations may prove helpful.

First, not all instances of tenure insecurity require deliberately targeting women. Even when interventions seek to strengthen tenure security at the broader community or household level, they should be designed and implemented using gender-responsive, rather than gender-blind, goals and practices. Only then will efforts to secure tenure for many avoid unintentionally leaving women behind.

Further, while information about women’s perceived tenure insecurity is critical to guide interventions, women’s perceptions will not capture the impact of tenure threats unknown to them. This is of particular relevance in environments where information is unevenly shared and received, and, where marginalized populations and, women in particular, may not be privy to either legal regulations or to plans by the government, corporations, or their local chiefs. Because of these constraints, women may incorrectly believe they possess more tenure security than they actually have. Efforts to strengthen women’s tenure security should therefore rely on experts and key stakeholders to gather and integrate this additional information.

Second, since the challenges to be addressed are likely to include deeply rooted gender-discriminatory attitudes, behaviors, and systems that shape social norms and permeate governance structures, the solutions need not be restricted to what has been tried within the land rights sector. We can learn, for example, from what has been done around the world to contain the HIV-AIDS epidemic or to address gender-based violence, child marriage, female genital mutilation, and other challenges that are also complicated and exacerbated by systemic discrimination.Footnote 2

Innovative and effective options need not be limited to those originating in the development sector. There is much that can be learned, for instance, by the way private companies have mastered their ability to deliver information, target messages, provide low-cost services, and shape our preferences and behavior. Sodas, cell phones, jeans, social media, and animated characters have reached people in every corner of the world in astonishingly short periods of time. This creativity is integral to breaking through structural and systemic biases that can be extremely resistant to change.

Lastly, efforts to enhance women’s tenure security are more likely to succeed if they take a holistic approach. This means combining a number of interventions. Interventions may be top-down, bottom-up, peer-to-peer; delivered through multiple entry points (e.g., broad-reaching media, authorities, word of mouth, or using demonstration effects); and targeting different stakeholders (e.g., women, men, the elderly, the youth, and authorities) with complementary goals; and taken together, these approaches can offer a combination of quick gains and sustained change.

This is virtually impossible to accomplish by one set of actors. Policymakers, government agencies, community leaders, and civil society organizations each have mandates, resources, and capacity constraints. Thus, champions of women’s tenure security will do well by promoting, from the beginning, approaches that rely on multipronged interventions and a sustainable coalition of changemakers. A recent example from Landesa’s work follows.

A Multipronged Approach to Strengthen Women’s Land Rights in Uttar Pradesh, India

To ensure women in Uttar Pradesh are better placed to acquire land rights through family inheritance or government land allocation programs, Landesa has partnered with government officials, local representatives, civil society organizations, lawyers, and the media. Over the years, we have operated at several nodes:

  • We have imparted land literacy trainings to women to enhance their understanding of their land rights and about how to navigate the land administration system.

  • We have sensitized local Land Revenue officials so that they could better understand the regulations that affect women’s land rights and could apply them confidently.

  • We have sensitized local elected representatives who are members of the village-level Land Management Committees so that they could better determine who is eligible to receive land parcels.

  • We have collaborated with the Department of Panchayati Raj to ensure that the curriculum to train newly elected representatives included information on women’s land rights and the processes to follow in allocating land to them.

  • We have engaged with District Administrative Offices to get their buy-in and enlist their support so that laws were implemented effectively and a range of programs acted in coordination. This resulted, for example, in the Rural Development Department writing the legal provisions supporting women’s land rights on their office walls to make them highly visibly, and coordinating with us so that our literacy sessions were carried out in the same areas where they were empowering women collectives.

  • We have engaged with the Uttar Pradesh Revenue Department on an ongoing basis, asking them to support the work and advocating for changes in legal entitlements and procedural laws that were constraining women’s land rights.

  • We partnered with civil society organizations in Uttar Pradesh so that they could better understand the intricacies of women’s land rights and could advocate with us for the changes needed.

  • We partnered with lawyers to gain a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of the practical implications and challenges around women’s land rights.

  • We worked with the media to elevate the challenges of women’s land rights and gradually build broad-based fruitful conversations to address these challenges.

Conclusions

While much has been done and learned around women’s land rights over the past few decades, securing tenure rights for all women and men by 2030, as promised under the SDGs that tackle global poverty, hunger, and gender inequality, requires addressing the critical gaps that remain. We need to ensure that there are simple and practical ways to generate, access, and use primary data to diagnose and track progress on women’s land rights. We need to ensure that there are nuanced and contextual assessments of the key sources of tenure insecurity for women. We need carefully assessed and documented examples of what works (and what has not worked), when and for whom so that women’s land rights can be addressed in an effective and timely manner. We, practitioners, governments, and funders, need to acknowledge that these issues are complex, that addressing them requires a longer time horizon and complementary interventions, and, as put forth by the Bridge Collaborative (www.bridgecollaborativeglobal.org), that it necessitates bold approaches that benefit from multiple disciplines and expertise from the start.